This is your warning or invitation about unusual behavior happening between a man and a woman ahead. In other words, hot sex will happen.
I didn't have time to panic though, in the wink it took me to locate him. He was rushing back to his position behind me, carrying a basket that he must have hidden earlier behind some benches.
Feet scratching over the soft rubber covered ground, I slowed myself down, curious what he had brought. I didn't get to finish the job. Still swinging with some amplitude, he seized one chain and stopped me, before pinning me to the seat with an embrace from behind. Next thing I knew, he tugged a blindfold over my face.
"I think your eyes need a break." I didn't need to see to discern the mischief that had taken hold of him.
Hindered by Adrian to get anywhere close to his surprise prop with my hands, I asked, "What's going on now?"
"This is a playground. I thought we play."
"OK," I said slowly, as if the blindfold hampered my ability to shape words. Or maybe it was my conviction that Blind Man's Buff was not, what Adrian was up to. "What's on your mind?"
"A test, how well you paid attention at the testing the other day." I couldn't stop a short chuckle, but the attempt to do so turned it into a chortling cough. What I remembered of the testing, he spoke about, most vividly, were his fingers between my legs. Under the table, he had made me crazy while I had to keep a straight face in front of his sommelier. "After all, we don't attend such things for fun. Thus, I need to be strict with you in this test. For every mistake that you make, I get to remove one piece of your clothing."
What I knew now with certainty was that his hands hadn't spontaneously strayed in boredom. It had been part of one long, fiendish plan. Not to mention that he had requested in the morning that I should wear a dress. It had been another of our compromises that gave him permission to do so once a week and that now limited the number of my clothes to three.
Three mistakes. That would be the shortest game ever. And I would be naked. In a playground. Deprived of my vision.
"It's a dare," he whispered into my ear without touching me. I couldn't see him. I couldn't feel him. But I could hear his already throaty voice. I could sense the heat, effusing his body. And I could smell his taunting self.
I licked my lips. "What's in for me?"
"You mean when you pass the test?" I nodded. "Your choice."
This opened a whole wide range of options. But giving him a taste of what he was aiming for with me, sounded like the most fun. It was an opportunity worth fighting for. "Let's do it," I said bravely.
"Stand up then," he ordered, with the ring of a certain victory in his voice. "I need easy access to what will soon be mine."
When I had done so, I could sense Adrian get to work behind me. There was the clangor of glass audible, the plop of cork, the pouring of some wine. I thought, he set the filled glasses onto the board of the swing. But I couldn't be sure since the telltale sign of the sound of glass place onto wood was missing. I could hear other sounds though, I couldn't place. My mind raced, attempting to figure out what was going on. Time stretched. Too many heartbeats. Too fast.
Finally, I felt Adrian walk past me. He came to a stop directly in front of me. I was wedged between the swing and him.
"Are you ready?" he asked into my darkness.
I nodded. No sooner did I catch the first fragrances of some wine. It was earthy, with some cherry aroma and something that I persistently connected with soap. Lavender? Was that it? I remembered smelling the distinct combination, remembered that it had tasted nothing like what it had smelled. And it was yet still different when Adrian fed it to me.
I twisted and mangled my brain. Adrian's finger ran up my arm. It made my inner thighs press closer to each other. I wouldn't be distracted. "Was it one of the chateau ones?"
"We tested a couple of wines named after chateaux that evening," Adrian taunted me. "I need a real name."
The impossibility of my task hit home when Adrian's finger whispered along my cheek. In my head, I saw the bottles float through my vision, saw the sommelier's mouth move. Yet, it was all just background noise to the appearance of hot fingerprints burning through my skin all the way to my very core. I had no idea of any name. So, I ended up saying the first thing that came to mind. "Chateau Lafit."
"Ha!" Adrian laughed. "Nice try, but no. You want another sip before I take your panties, my dear?"
"Yes, please." I needed it.
He fed me the rest of the wine in the glass in one kiss, before my panties were history. In much the same fashion my dress and bra were gone within a matter of minutes. Naked, in the middle of a playground I wasn't as courageous anymore, even though deep inside I knew that he would have taken precautions so that we would be undisturbed.
"Feeling naked now?" he teased as I shivered, not from the cold.
"I am naked," I managed to say without sounding whiny.
"We have to do something about that, right?"
Whatever I thought he would do next, with no fiber of my body had I expected him to lift my hand and push something onto my finger of all things. Why even dress a finger when there were breasts and lady parts and buttocks on display? It took a second to register what was going on. Then my other hand reached for the blindfold, needing to see that there really was a ring. He stopped me half way up. So, all I could do was feel for it and stammer, "What is that about?"
He took my hands in his, stilling my fidgeting fingers. "I want you to marry me." My shock at the words must have been palpable, since he squeezed my hands. "Not today. Not tomorrow. But I want you to understand that this is where we are heading. And I want to be sure that you share this vision with me?"
I was stunned. Never in a million years – and so soon – and after Mike and Henry – and ... But with Adrian the thought didn't feel quite as outlandish. When I was with him, I simply was. It was never about becoming or having been. He was he. I was I. And together we were – we. More. I had thought, I could find more with him.
The sound that came from my purse ripped me from my thoughts. A message had arrived on my phone. Instinctively, I turned. But Adrian wouldn't have any of that. Pinching my chin between finger and thumb, he directed my face back to the front.
"I asked you a question. That's what is important right now."
I swallowed, immediately back with my thoughts at the ring on my finger – the only stitch of anything I wore, the only thing that shielded me from the world around me in that moment.
"You mean like an engagement?" I croaked.
"If the word scares you, we could call it a pre-engagement engagement. It's mainly about commitment. I like plans and goals."
I had avoided making plans for my private life. The shrink, Mike had me visit in the first days of his guardianship, had said that it had to do with losing my mom and later my stepdad. Apparently, I also liked to challenge fate by seeking risks because of this reason.
"Yes."
"You mean it?"
"Yes."
He seized my face and kissed me, deep and demanding and thankful and promising.
"You trust me?" He panted once we had parted and bathed my face with his wine-flavored breath.
"I just promised that – one day – I will marry you. What do you think?"
I could feel his smile as he pushed me back onto the swing. It was covered by a soft towel what would explain, why I didn't hear him put the glasses down.
"Hold on tight."
He lifted one foot and slung some rope around my ankle. Before I knew it, I was tied to the chain on one side, and he repeated the procedure with the other leg. It dawned on me that he must have had the ropes threaded through the chains when he had prepared the wine. Though unyielding, they were soft enough to not cut uncomfortably into the skin. The position, they forced me into, was another matter. If I let go with my hands, my butt would probably fall off the board, so tightly packed was I now.
"Ready?"
I didn't know for what, but Adrian's question was of rhetoric nature anyway. He began to turn the swing, twisting the chains above me as he went. Without warning, he let go. As I was spun, and thrown left and right in the end, I could have sworn I could feel his smoldering eyes on my bare skin.
Into these thoughts, he lifted the swing.
"Oh no, Adrian." I had a hard enough time to stay seated as it was.
"Remember the wind on your face before? This will be a thousand time better. My little cactus will flash to the moon."
He pushed and I felt instantly what he had meant about the wind. My legs were spread. Everything of me was exposed to the world. And thinking about Adrian watching me before, had made me wet. The blindfold made it possible for me to forget. For a blissful moment, I was alone in the world. I was the moon in which light I bathed. I was the wildness of nature.
When the movement stopped, I could feel Adrian in front of me. He must have gone down onto his knees, because when his mouth touched me, it placed its kiss between my legs.
"This is for you."
His tongue slipped into me, his fingers sprayed against my bare butt to hold the swing in place. He licked and sucked, nipped and pinched until my legs quivered and twitched against their restrains. Even the chains trembled with tiny clicks while he finished, what nature had started. I came apart at a playground, bound to a swing, with a ring on my finger, and what were the odds, but it had never felt better.